“I was the baby of eight siblings and everyone went to school. My mother taught me to read because she was a Sunday school teacher. She taught me to read from the book she used for her class on Sunday. I was about five years old then. My mom was into the religious part of things and she wanted to do what was right. Fighting for civil rights is something I’ve done my whole life. You just do it.”
In the 1940’s, she and other Urban League co-workers staged sit-ins to desegregate a popular Downtown Pittsburgh eatery. The cooks would make a point of spitting in their food. But the group outsmarted the cooks by eating around it.
To Johnson, this was a part of her job description.
“If you worked at the Urban League, that was your job. It was our training. We sat through all of that and we took it until we broke down the cycle,” Johnson said. “Civil Rights and correcting actions was my job.”
Soon after, Johnson became the first African-American manager at the Port Authority of Allegheny County. Her job included creating the company’s consumer relations department during the turbulent 1960’s. She was moved to PAT’s equal opportunity department where she handled discrimination complaints and ensured that some of the contracts went to Blacks and women.
In addition, Johnson confronted the problem of kids disrespecting the bus drivers by creating Classroom on Wheels, a program where the drivers would go into local schools and explain transportation and their jobs to the students.
“The program went to public and private schools. I think we talked to about 30,000 kids over the course of the program,” said the longtime Bethel AME member. “The drivers would park the bus outside of the school and spend the day there talking about the history of transportation. It made the kids realize that the driver was the most important person.
“The union jumped all over me for getting the drivers involved. The drivers liked it and so did the kids. It stopped all of the misbehavior that was happening on the buses. God helped me make the teachings different at each school. The kids learned a lot, PAT learned a lot and I learned a lot, too.”
Classroom on Wheels was in operation until Johnson retired.
Although she retired from PAT, Johnson did not slow down. She became even more involved in Bethel AME and she spent more time with her sister, Thelma whom she lived next door to. The two sisters lived next door to each other in the 800 block of Shawnee Street in Pittsburgh’s Hill District until late January of this year when a fire destroyed both houses. The blaze killed Thelma and left Katie without a home.
“I saw the third floor of my sister’s house pull away from the foundation. It was so destructive. All my furniture, clothes, pots and pans and everything was burned up in one day in that fire. It left one sister dead and the other one homeless. I didn’t know where I was going to live but I knew God would never leave me or forsake me.” Johnson quietly recalled. “If I wanted a hairpin to scratch my head, I had to buy the hairpin and then scratch my head.”
For two and a half months, Johnson resided with her friend and mentee Janet Moyo in Gibsonia.
“By 9 p.m. that night my sister had passed away and by 9:30 p.m. I had a place to stay. I said ‘Thank you, God.’ I knew he hadn’t forsaken me. That house was beautiful and Janet wouldn’t let me buy a thing.”
Johnson stayed at the Moyo home until her son, Everett, an economist in Washington D.C., came home and helped her find her current home.
“I wanted to go back to the Hill District but my son and no one else thought it would be good for me since that’s where the fire was,” she said.
Despite several health problems—Johnson has suffered through a major stroke and two aneurisms—Johnson is thankful for the life that she has led thus far.
“I get down on my knees and I am thankful to God to be able to do all of these things all of my life,” Johnson said. “I have a sense of pride.”
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